A New Take on the Classic Pass Labs D1 with an ESS Dac

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savvas PMed me today about his side, asking me to send as gift by airmail uninsured.... did you guys really ask for that? I was just putting together a reply when I saw this. everyone would have to agree, thats a lot of money to just leave with the gods and I would wash my hands of any responsibility.

I wil also not declare as gift, if anything that red-lights the package for inspection by customs and sorry I use international post for my business daily; i'm not going to take that sort of risk for someone else. I also have to explain in tax where all this stuff has gone because 8K or so flowed through my account, a large package arrived which I paid tax and fees on so there is record of it (more on that in email) and it cannot just vanish into thin air to save you guys money.

I need to think on what to do, will chat in email. we'll work something out, but I urge you to at least use a reliable, trackable shipping method, for the whole EU this will be worth a few grand.

i'll send an email out with more detail, lets not go into too much detail publicly. so dont reply in the thread with detail either.
 
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trickymicky would have actually been the best because there is a postal service called pack-n-track with auspost, its not express but it has basic tracking. its not available to the whole world, only certain countries and the UK is one of them. much cheaper than express mail, about the same as registered mail.

actually just thought of something I think, but yeah not gift, on a package this big that just says SEARCH ME in big red letters.
 
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Hi Guys,

Just a quick update on the status of the GB...

Absolutely everything is packed up, addressed and ready to go out in the morning. The four bigger boxes are going out to the four distributors, and the smaller padded envelopes are the Canadian orders. I would expect a few of the Canadian orders will arrive before the weekend, but the international ones will take about a week to arrive. After that, it's just local shipping.

Cheers,
Owen

Posted on 8 November 2012, more than two months, I am afraid the package for Asia already lost.:mad:
 

opc

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I`m getting a little nervous about it at this point as well. I`ll make some calls tomorrow to see what the deal is.

I was told 6-8 weeks worst case, so I suppose it`s not completely unreasonable, but the other package to the EU arrive in mid December which makes me wonder why the Australia package isn`t there yet.

qusp:

Can you confirm that nothing has been received on your end yet?

Savvas:

Any news?
 
yep as was I getting nervous and have been fielding emails from all over, even those not in my area....till today nothing, today something!

looks like it made a visit to customs, which probably explains the delay; although I was already expecting a long wait. it was opened with a note inside explaining that it had been determined to contain items of concern (I guess the fet boxes in the antistatic baggies, Xray wouldnt like them) and that it had been opened found to be no problem. it was carefully sealed back up, untouched, so all is fine.

No dates on when this visit was, but i'm guessing that delayed us a couple weeks.

anyway i'm pretty much done with packing as a result already before it got here. I even matched the Auricap into as many 1% quads as I could, which is more mental placebo than anything for most of us, but worth doing when you have a large number of anything and your a mental case. no complicated method, just cheap DMM sitting in front of the telly.

Not doing anything on it today, i'll get some stuff weighed up ASAP (probably tomorrow at this point) so we can get the TAX, shipping quotes and payments sorted for the last leg

:D
 
Us blokes down under always pay for tracking&insurance from Canada, dunno what it is but that country seems to send stuff via the Bermuda Triangle of shipping. I've never lost anything but it does always seem to take an inordinate amount of time.

So that means poweramp fets too qusp? Looks like I'll come visit you later this week :D (sorry for OT gents, I'm just a bit excited)


Chris
 
A year? lol $4K? lol

besides i've built the equivalent of 4-5 entire balanced ESS dacs, to keep 'only' 2, but about to either add one of Ackos ES9016 units, which will actually work with the NTD1 as well, since the electrical characteristics (voltage and current output) are identical; or just finish the design for my own dual 9016 dac.

the ES9016 is just the 9018 Die without DVDD_L/R and DVCC_T pins being brought out, must be just generated internally from one of the other supplies. everything is the same, you can treat it just like 9018 but get slightly lower performance with less power supply fiddling/cost. i'm amazed it hasnt been taken on more readily. its not much cheaper as a chip (~15USD less) but will work out quite a bit cheaper to build a finished dac with. It should have exactly the same sound sig, has the same modulator, same everything as far as I can tell.

bigpandahk, if you budget for your dac initially was 1000, it was an unrealistic budget, like many who set out to build an ESS dac you didnt account for everything. I also strongly advised you against building dual mono (which tends to push the price up a touch...) and youve burned a dac or 2 along the way, added the fifo, long and varied arduino stuff. sorry but its all on you buddy :rolleyes: even with dual NTD1 that should be ~25% max of the total cost even with the upgrades

its all good, but please dont put your expensive decisions on me. I think you'll like the result, but I also think you would have enjoyed the result of a single dac just as much. the ES9018 chip is already designed as dual mono in a single chip if the PCB and power supply is right ie. not to the datasheet or some other dacs on the market that followed it.

@ opc: no worries mate, indeed now you see why I try to always use express from Canada, it often causes this kind of worry.

@ hochopeper: indeed mate, lateral fets are in the house as well!
 
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Totally agree that $1000 was an unrealistic budget, but for someone knew nothing about digital audio, all I knew was a BIII DAC + PSU + case = $1000 lol :p
I like the result very much although it's not final yet. Looking forward to listen to the power of the NTD1.:D
Other than the expensive advice, you save my life (money) several times. In this several months, I learnt a lot and enjoy a lot:)
 
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